Thursday, April 12, 2012

Contemporary Art Dealer Lists East Hampton House

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Spring has sprung, puppies, and summer is fast on its way so if your pockets are deep and filled with dough it's time to start looking to buy or lease a home one of the hideously expensive summertime seaside resorts that attract rich and famous folks like flies to a glue strip.

With that in mind we (virtually) dash let's head out to the Hamptons this morning where, thanks again to our unofficial aide de camp Hot Chocolate our attentions were recently turned to an art filled mansion on East Hampton's prestigious Further Lane that recently popped up on the market with a blue chip price tag of $24,900,000.

The property in questions is technically owned by a corporation but a few minutes digging and drilling down into some documents we peeped on Property Shark connect the corporation to the very high-brow Art World power couple Jean-Pierre and Rachel Lehmann.

Simmer down now, children. Your Mama recognizes that unless y'all dabble in the hoity-toity New York City art scene you just may not actually know who these Lehmann folks are so give us a moment to give you a lesson: Miz Lehmann is a Swiss-born and very successful New York City-based gallerist—she's the She-rah of the cutting edge Lehmann Maupin gallery—who shows and represents the work of a slew of big name contemporary artists like Gilbert & George, Tracey Emin,
Juergen Teller, Erwin Wurm (whose One Minute Sculptures are beyond genius), and Ross Bleckner,
(with whom we once—true story—had a rather unsavory run in). Also on her roster are a number of recently arrived art stars like
Billy Childish, Mr., and Do Ho Suh.

Not surprisingly Miz Lehmann's wealthy husband Jean-Pierre Lehmann is a well-known and -regarded collector of contemporary artworks who was famously—or famously in The Art World, anyways—found himself engaged in an ugly legal imbroglio in the mid-Aughts with a Harlem gallerist over a small start-up loan and first right of refusal access to the work shown in the gallery, specifically works made by Ethiopian-born (and Michigan-raised) abstract artist Julie Mehretu.

Anyhoo, property records show Mister and Missus Lehmann acquired their supremely located Hamptons estate way back in June 1995 for—are you sitting down for this?—$900,000. Presumably there was some sort of other consideration offered to the seller who had, according to the online records we peeped, bought the 3.99-acre property only 18 (or so) months earlier for the significantly higher amount of $3,000,000.

Current listing information shows the main mansion, a European-style villa built in 1915 and designed by the unfortunately named architect William Bottomley, measures around 6,000 square feet and includes a total of 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms, 7 fireplaces, and a long private driveway shared with the compound of Larry Gagosian, another seriously successful gallerist with the paper and taste for ludicrously expensive residences.

Listing information goes on to explain that the house was renovated in 2009 by architect Robert Young (and craftsman Scott Keller) in such a way as to retain and combine the Old School elegance and architectural gravitas of the original residence with a more modern-minded and even avant garde approach the kitchen and bathrooms.

(Additional and drop-dead delicious pictures of the mansion's
copper-accented kitchen complex and organic-meets-metal bathrooms can be
found here and here on the architect's website.)

We're certain some of y'all are gonna beef and moan about the somewhat spare, colorful, contemporary and decidedly idiosyncratic day-core but Your Mama goes goosepimply for this sort of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride-like collision between downright proper period architecture, madcap modern day-core and preposterously pricey pieces of art. We're sure we'll take a lot of heat from some of the more traditionally-oriented children but that's alright. Sticks and stones and all that...

The back of the house opens to a gigantic dining/lounging/entertaining terrace with trough-like water feature framed by parallel rows of precisely-pruned trees. Vast lawns dotted with mature shade trees spread out around the house, gardens, and an orchard planted in geometric pattern, hedge-wrapped tennis court with viewing terrace, and an over-sized swimming pool with columned and tented pavilion. We're not sure exactly how it works, but listing information states the property transfers with private ocean access, a very valuable commodity for sure.

Some of the nearby properties are owned by rich, famous and/or high-profile peeps like Jerry Seinfeld (who has a goddamn softball diamond on his oceanfront estate), real estate tycoon Arthur Zeckendorf, Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michaels, fashion designer Helumt Lang, and Angela Chao, international shipping executive and widow of investment banking bigwig Bruce Wasserstein. Last June (2011) property records show former Hollywood honcho turned high-end house flipper Sandy Gallin paid an unknown amount of money for a 1920s shingled cottage just down the lane from the Lehmann's spread. It was last listed for $5,600,000

Now then, we really hate to be so (uncharacteristically) brief, butter beans, but we have our friend Flower in from New York who wants to meet up for some wholesome brecky-breck at Urth Cafe so we gotta be fleet on
our feet. Ciao for now.

13 comments:

I don't know, Mama Dearest. I like everything about the house...except the bathrooms, or as you used to humorously call them, "terliting facilities." I appreciate repurposing older structures and keeping them relevant, especially a house as beautiful as this one, but I think the bathrooms are too extreme and far away from the scheme of the rest of the house in my meaningless opinion. I have never liked raised sink basins, not even farmhouse kitchen sinks, no matter the day-core. But that's just me.

The Lehmann East Hamptons home is an extraordinarily successful domestic union of traditional and modern, a mixed marriage that is rarely this happy and kosher. And perhaps a few of the Children are unaware that William Bottomley was a respected east coast architect, who designed many colonial revival estates and a handful of public buildings, as well as a collaborating architect of New York's River House?

Bottomley was a very high-profile architect....too bad his beautiful creation has been marred by the owners "art" though at least it's reversible. Except for that insane bathroom which belongs in a Hotel W.

LOVE the decor here....very fanciful..BUT the kitchen...yeah nursedeb is on the kitchen.I like it...but why is the fridge miles from the stove? not handy at all. love all the copper..and the baths!!! LORDY....can I move in right away?

Beautiful place. It was designed by William Lawrence Bottomley, a favorite architect of the quiet rich back in the first half of the 20th century. At some point Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone owned this place.